By Rob Harris
London: NATO wanted this week’s summit to be relatively boring. A controversy-free meeting, a bland communique, and a polished photo op to show unity. What it’s getting instead is a flashpoint – one lit by the United States itself.
Just days before 32 NATO leaders descend on the Netherlands, the world’s most powerful military alliance is watching its agenda be torched by a fresh theatre of war: Iran. And not just Israeli warplanes this time, but American ones, too.
US President Donald Trump, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has long made clear he sees Iran as unfinished business.Credit: AP
In a stunning military escalation, US forces joined Israel in bombing Iran’s most fortified nuclear sites, including the Fordow enrichment facility buried deep under a mountainside. GBU-57 “bunker-busting” bombs – some of the heaviest non-nuclear ordnance in the American arsenal – were used to punch through rock and concrete. Other strikes hit Natanz and Isfahan.
Donald Trump’s message was blunt: “Obliterated.”
And just like that, the fragile choreography of what might have been NATO’s most consequential summit in its 76-year history – carefully designed to hide its internal fractures – has been blown off course.
The summit was never supposed to be about Iran. Or even Ukraine, for that matter.
To keep the US president happy – and at the table – NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte stripped the agenda down to its bare bones. Gone was any serious discussion on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been downgraded to dinner guest, rather than council participant. The alliance’s evolving strategy on Russia? Hidden in a drawer.
Instead, the headline act was supposed to be a carefully pre-cooked pledge from European allies: more defence spending, more kit, more readiness. Trump demands 5 per cent of GDP. Rutte’s trying to sell a compromise – 3.5 per cent for core defence, another 1.5 per cent for “infrastructure” and cybersecurity.
The plan was to hand Trump a win, avoid tantrums, and keep the alliance intact.
But the bombs have changed everything. Now the summit risks being overshadowed – not by Europe’s lack of tanks, but by Washington’s growing appetite for war in the Middle East.
Trump has long made clear he sees Iran as unfinished business. In his first term, he tore up the nuclear deal. Now, back in office, he’s finally acted – decisively and unilaterally.
This was not a reluctant, behind-the-scenes intelligence assist to Israel. It was a full-force US military operation. Pentagon officials confirm the strikes were co-ordinated “from the top”, and Trump wasted no time taking credit.
For NATO, the implications are immense.
The alliance, still reeling from more than three years of trench warfare in Ukraine, now finds itself forced to reckon with a US president drawing it into a broader regional war – one few European capitals have the stomach, or capacity, for.
And critically, Washington didn’t wait for consensus. It briefed few allies in detail. It didn’t ask permission.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy had even met his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, on Friday, alongside his counterparts from France, Germany and the European Union, seeking to negotiate a settlement before Trump decided whether to take military action against Tehran.
To some, that could be a problem. NATO’s power lies not just in weapons, but in solidarity. And right now, that solidarity is showing cracks.
Every detail of this summit, from its shortened agenda to its deliberately vague communique, has been crafted with one person in mind: Trump.
Rutte, who has a working relationship with Trump, has done everything possible to avoid confrontation. Even the location – the World Forum in The Hague – has been fortified by the biggest security operation in Dutch history, with a €183 million ($328 million) price tag to match.
But now, that careful stagecraft is in danger of collapse.
Trump’s strike on Iran has turned him from the guest of honour into the wildcard everyone is scrambling to contain.
There are already rumblings among European diplomats that the Iran escalation will hijack the summit’s already thin agenda. The defence spending agreement – once the centrepiece – may now look like appeasement in the face of American militarism.
The goal for Rutte and European leaders is simple but fraught: keep Trump inside the tent.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has in effect been erased. That’s not just a diplomatic slight to Zelensky – it’s a signal that NATO’s moral clarity, forged in the fires of Russian aggression, is losing coherence.
The goal for Rutte and European leaders is simple but fraught: keep Trump inside the tent.
That means giving him a rhetorical win on spending, flattering his “deal-making”, and steering well clear of topics – such as Ukraine or multilateralism – that might provoke a blow-up.
But Iran complicates this calculus.
Many NATO allies do not support a broader war in the Middle East. Some, such as France and Germany, fear it could inflame domestic unrest and stretch already thin defence budgets. And unlike the war in Ukraine, where NATO unity was born out of necessity, the Iran escalation feels driven by Trump’s politics, not collective strategy.
In private, NATO officials worry that the Iran strikes will embolden Trump to demand more – not just money, but obedience.
At the heart of the NATO project is Article 5 – the promise that an attack on one is an attack on all.
But that collective guarantee only works if the members believe the US is acting in the alliance’s interest, not just its own.
If Trump dragged NATO members toward a war in Iran, while gutting support for Ukraine, that bond is tested. And with him openly questioning the value of Article 5, the alliance begins to look less like a partnership and more like a power imbalance.
In public, the alliance will present a united front this week. Leaders will smile. Defence commitments will be announced. Trump will claim credit.
But beneath the optics, NATO’s cohesion is eroding. Not because of Russian tanks, but because of American unpredictability.
And it’s forced NATO and Europe to confront an uncomfortable truth. The greatest threat to its unity might now come from within the alliance itself.
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